Stories Women Weave: Merging community-based and academic interpretive approaches to style in wood splint baskets in the Upper New York State regional category of the Northeast basketry tradition.

This dissertation explores patterned variability in Indigenous wood splint basket weaving within the Northeastern Woodlands Basketry Tradition. It focuses specifically on the groups that make up the Haudenosaunee confederacy in what is now classified as the Upper New York State regional category. This category has received considerably less attention than the other three regions in Northeastern North America. Basketry has been approached through both community-driven and academic methods, however, both focuse on different aspects of the industry. Academic discussions tend to focus on typologies, origins, and development, whereas community-driven discussions focus more on meaning and the importance of basketry to the communities. Academic researchers and basket making communities alike agree that baskets have the potential to transmit information and merging the information gathered by academic and community-driven research offers a more complete understanding of the Upper New York State basketry tradition. The purpose of this study is to explore the content of these messages present in wood splint baskets through time by using both academic and community-based research as complimentary to one another. The time period under investigation begins in the mid-19th century and continues to the present day. A total of 372 baskets from six museum collections were considered for this study. Block-stamped, hand-painted, and woven designs, common prior to A.D. 1860, were analyzed in terms the visual themes applied to the exterior of the basket. In addition, symmetry analysis was conducted on the themes woven directly into the basket forms on baskets made post A.D.1860. Results of the style analysis revealed decorative elements on both utilitarian and fancy baskets that refer to key cultural concepts that express and communicate themes such as seasonal ceremonies, and the importance of family, the land, and other beings on earlier utility style baskets. These themes do not disappear with the advent of fancy baskets. Rather, the designs woven directly into the fancy baskets are argued as metaphors for some of the same key cultural concepts found in the early baskets that govern the Haudenosaunee people. The designs become integrated in a more subtle way amidst the onslaught of assimilative pressures.Ph.D